Texas Textbooks Battle Is Actually an American War 1252
ideonexus writes "I've been lackadaisical when it comes to following stories about Texas schoolboard attempts to slip creationism into biology textbooks, dismissing the stories as just 'dumbass Texans,' but what I didn't realize is that Texas schoolbooks set the standard for the rest of the country. And it's not just Creationism that this Christian coalition is attempting to bring into schoolbooks, but a full frontal assault on history, politics, and the humanities that exploits the fact that final decisions are being made by a school board completely academically unqualified to make informed evaluations of the changes these lobbyists propose. This evangelical lobby has successfully had references to the American Constitution as a 'living document,' as textbooks have defined it since the 1950s, removed in favor of an 'enduring Constitution' not subject to change, as well as attempting to over-emphasize the role Christianity played in the founding of America. The leaders of these efforts outright admit they are attempting to redefine the way our children understand the political landscape so that, when they grow up, they will have preconceived notions of the American political system that favor their evangelical Christian goals."
People weren't aware of this? (Score:5, Insightful)
...dismissing the stories as just 'dumbass Texans,' but what I didn't realize is that Texas schoolbooks set the standard for the rest of the country.
I knew this and am not even American. Every piece of coverage I've seen on this issue has explained how wide reaching the ramifications are. How can anyone have missed it?
Refreshing! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
One is science the other is religion. Guess which one does not belong in a schoolbook?
Re:A Christian's take (Score:1, Insightful)
Fine, then no more tax exemptions for churches.
"Living Constitution" (Score:5, Insightful)
I asked a lawyer who believed in this, pre-market crash, if they believed in a "living mortgage." Why is the Constitution the only legal document we do that to?
Anyone who wants to teach that is going for a particular point of view. Why is the opposite view nefarious but this one all sweetness and light?
This whole summary is ignorant. Everyone is pushing a point of view. It has to be somebody's.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
Creationism does not in anyway detract from evolution.
That's true and great (says the Christian), but that just means there's zero reason to have Creationism (or its bullshit offspring, Intelligent Design) taught in science class. So, not what they're trying to do.
Yet, there this is interpreted that clergy may not talk about a political candidate from the puplit. To me, this is a law abdridging freedom of speech.
Wait, what fucking law are you talking about?
Nothing new here. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth revisiting the lesson of the sixties that the Hippies got right, such as not to trust the government and that the purpose of public education is to lie to you.
Students should regard any political lesson taught in school as propaganda, should never trust their teachers, an in general fucking hate the government. Bible Thumpers have always sought to rule by infiltration and dominionism.
Know this, fight back, agitate others to fight back, and above all disregard anything any religionist says to defend their superstition. We don't respect Scientology for obvious reasons, and there is no reason any other superstition should get a pass, especially on a geek site. We are modern people, and modern people don't need gods.
Well, 'fair dos' to them (Score:1, Insightful)
Whilst I personally do not agree with their standpoint, at least they are mounting a vigorous, forward-looking defense of their beliefs.
No worse than state-sponsored Madrassas in Pakistan and elsewhere.
It's up to the rest of society to fight their corner equally well, in the interests of balance; unfortunately only the fanatics seem to have the energy to do this...
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, "living document" was definitely a rhetorical fraud or at least a rhetorical mistake made at some point. The constitution is valueless if it can be simply interpreted into the mores and norms of whatever the current age happens to be rather than debated and amended into the modern age as the framers intended.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:5, Insightful)
The constitution is not the only legal document subject to modification. In fact many legal judgments and court orders are subject to modification.
The key is that the terms of how and to what degree things can be modified are either part of the document itself, or established by statute.
As with all things, there's often room for subjective interpretation of the terms of modification, and that's where case law and precedent come in.
What distinguishes a constitution is that it is intentionally difficult to modify.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:from out of middle-field... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people believe that the world is flat, too. The 'some people' rubric flatly flies in the face of the fact that faith-based (Genesis-based) creationism doesn't agree at all with evidence that science has found. Trying to mosh the two contrasting theories together makes little sense. What these Texans are trying to do is to blithely shove their 'faith' down other people's throats as fact. What are the facts? I'm happy to have presented, both sides of the evidence to children and let them understand both. Their parents can teach them which version of the faith-based versions they believe, and let the schools present the rest of the evidence. Let the storm begin.
Seeing a problem and missing the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless of "academic qualification" (Most people with the paper don't have the ethical or logical capability to be truly considered qualified), the Texas school board was responding to its own concerns about the insertion of bias into textbooks.
Textbooks are already biased. How many people are around that are willing to stand against bias in ALL directions? I'm sick of bickering between defining "unbiased" as "suiting my own personal bias".
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
"After all, the initial singularity from which the universe sprung had to come from somewhere. "
Nice asserted conclusion. Asserted conclusions are not proof, but thanks for trying!
Re:Well, 'fair dos' to them (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course, it all depends who the fanatics are. Reacting with outrage, anger and scaremongering that the Constitution is described as 'enduring' rather then 'a living document' certainly seems quite fanatic to me.
I'm from one of the Scandinavian countries. Would the same people explode with rage if I happened to describe to a child that "'The Monarchy is a traditional part of X", instead of "The Monarchy in X is an institution which SOME people a long time ago chose to institute but which in no way means that it must ALWAYS be that way or is in any way unchangeable as soon as people dislike it", in every sentence?
Can I do the same with racial sensitivty laws? Some people choose; It has in the past been; we could change it but for now it's like; the constantly evolving laws are at the moment at; etc?
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
Intelligent design is a misnomer, either it was idiotic design or none at all.
For examples look no further than your hips or your knees, they are ill adept at walking upright.
One can be tested the other cannot. One is a scientific theory the other philosophy.
children at risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is the problem. The bible, and jesus, pretty much considered the worst thing one can do it be a hypocrite. A hypocrite is one who does things in a crowd to make others believe he or she has faith. Here is a famous verse of prayer.
Mathew 6:5-6"When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."
We also know the verses on giving money to be seen. The idea is that one does these things because they are in our heart, not to gain profit. And we are putting our children in jeopardy when we ask them to do these things we know are wrong, such as acting like hypocrites.
The problem with these nut cases in Texas is they have no faith. No amount of science will sway me from what i feel to be true. No amount of world religions will change my mind what I know to be right. This does not mean I am inflexible, but that flexibility comes with experience, not cult brain washing. And because these people have not faith, how can they build faith in their children. They can't. So they limit their exposure to the world knowing the false faith could never withstand the truths in the world.
In some ways I agree with this. If one is not able to build faith in a child, then ones options are limited. What I disagree with is making all the rest of us suffer. Sure, a parent may have a right to screw up their own child, but that does not mean they have the right to screw up everyone else's. The parent can home school, turn off the TV, but there is no reason that those of us who are responsible should have to suffer because a few are irresponsible. It would be like saying I can't buy a beer because some children weren't taught discipline, or because genetically they can't have beer, and haven't been trained to stay away from it.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
Tax dollars.
Re:Nothing new here. (Score:1, Insightful)
That worked fine until the Hippies now run the government. so we are now told oh wait you can trust us.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
Second millennium Muslim civ, quit following (Score:5, Insightful)
Two immediate responses are prompted by this article...
First is to call to mind the fate of the Muslim civilization in the second millennium. The Muslims kept the lights on during the Dark Ages. They're the reason we know about the ancient Greeks. In those days, science was considered good, because it was discovery of God's world and ways. Somewhere about the middle of the second millennium the Muslim civilization encountered other pressures (like invasions) and turned their backs on science in favor of religious dogma. (Don't know if there was cause and effect there, coincidental timing, or some other relationship.) They've never been at the forefront of civilization since. We're starting to do the same thing here in the US. One key part of science is to face the world truthfully, whatever it tells you, and deal with it. Religion can help you deal with it. But when you impose religion as a "truth filter" between you and the real world, you've lost it.
Second, a more tactical response, is to quit following Texas' lead on textbook purchases. Is there any reason we have to let them set the standard, or is it a combination of laziness and their purchasing power?
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:3, Insightful)
A mortgage isn't a living document because it is a contract between to organizations, a lender and a lendee. You could argue that the constitution is likewise a contract between the government and the governed, so where's the difference? The constitution lays out in it's contract exactly what needs to take place in order for the contract to be amended. Most notably, the contract can be amended without the support of, or indeed in opposition to, the government (realistically this would never happen but it is never the less allowed by the contract. Mortgages have no such clause and are therefore not living documents, you might be able to exercise a different part of the contract but unlike the constitution you can't rewrite the contract after it has been accepted by both parties.
The single most important part of the constitution are the rules for changing it, without those rules we would never have had the bill of rights, never been able to give women and minorities the right to vote, or been able to end the threat of slavery. The flexibility of our system of government is what has allowed it to survive and prosper for over 200 years, you can't just pretend that that flexibility doesn't exist because it is only exercised in extreme situations, you also can't pretend it doesn't exist just because you personally happen to like the state that it's currently in.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
No, one offers testable theories the other just magic. The fact that something cannot yet be explained is not reason to start assuming magic, fairies, unicorns and the sky wizard are all real.
Science is not the search for truth, just facts. If you want truth you should seek out philosophy.
you will lose this argument every time. (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony is this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that, some would argue that the present "living document" and history as given in textbooks from the 1970s and later was done by a concerted left wing effort to make the country swing left.
Instead, it backfired miserably.
My 1970s textbooks in grade school and high school went out of their way to define progress as a big march to the nanny state.. and as I remember flipping through pictures of poor people doing nothing, along came Ronald Reagan, to say that, well, it was all a bunch of crap.
Propaganda for kids doesn't work, because, the truthful documents are there. The truth is this: The wingers have this much of a point: The constitution is a strict document that defines powers given to the government, not, giving people rights, and the framers did base their ideas on Locke, that, because we've all got souls, we've all got rights. But what wingers also neglect to mention is that the framers were decidedly against much of their agenda too.
The founding fathers, in particular, want a standing army or a standing military at all. Indeed, up until the 1900s, the USA was barely a 2nd rate military power and looked on European military spending as a colossal sort of stupidity.
The founding fathers envisioned no federal power to regulate drugs or marriage or anything else. They would tax whiskey, and that was about it, and that was only to pay down the debt from the revolutionary war.
Bottom line is this, if you believe in the Constitution as it is written, there may not be any federal right to entitlements making, but there's no right to having a big army or any of the stuff the right wing wants, either.
The founding fathers were libertarians.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing the Constitution says is the first ammendment where it says,"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,"
Article VI:
"no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Why wouldn't The Founders want religous tests for public office?
Why is The U.S. Constitution thought by some to be an infallible document, when The Founders themselves recognized its imperfection and defined a process for amending it to fix bugs?
Why would a rational person argue with a person who simply "believes" stuff without any basis in reason?
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
And why is that precisely? And if the Universe requires a prime mover, then why doesn't the prime mover? And if you're going to assert that the prime mover is exempt from the very logic you claim makes the prime move necessary, then why can't I apply Occam's Razor and declare the universe can have that property you claim for the prime mover, and thus declare the prime mover unnecessary?
Or, more to the point, why would this posited singularity be bound by causality?
Re:Refreshing! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why can't we just have education books just present multiple popular theories along with the pros and cons of each?
Do you expect students to carry the new 10,000-page science volume entitled "Things That Aren't Science" home and back each night?
Because there are thousands of popular theories about thousands of things that Aren't Science. Bothering to mention any of them in a science class distracts from the limited time where students are able to learn about . . . science.
On not throwing out babies with bathwather (Score:5, Insightful)
Religion has a huge impact on many aspects of society: language, culture, politics -- even science. Religion could certainly be a legitimate topic of academic study, done properly. For example, I doubt it is possible to truly understand the history of the United States without understanding the role of religious belief. It's just too intertwined.
Your point about people trying to pass religion off as if it were science is well taken, however. Bugs me when people try to pass humanism off as science, too.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet, there this is interpreted that clergy may not talk about a political candidate from the puplit. To me, this is a law abdridging freedom of speech.
That freedom is only abridged by the choice of the church. Churches may speak all the politics they want from the pulpit and enjoy the full benefits of the Constitution as long as they pay taxes on their revenue like the rest of us (Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17). One could argue that by indulging in tax-exempt status, any church is ignoring the teachings of Jesus to acknowlege the earthly government that God has put in place (1 Timothy 2:1-2). I believe that, in order to help churches thrive financialy, an institutional ban on politics is reasonable in exchange for tax-exepmt status as this in no way impacts the church members from exercising their full individual Constiutional rights. You can't have it both ways and be consistent with your beliefs.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the Constitution was deliberately designed to act as Chains upon the U.S. Government and its leaders, and politicians don't like to be chained. They like to be free to act and control whatever they want. So what better way to achieve that goal than to pretend the Constitution is not a chain, but instead a piece of silly putty they can mold into any shape they please (or more recently - ignore completely). That gives the DC politicians the ability to do any damn thing that pleases them.
IMHO they (and we) have forgotten what the Democratic Party's founder (Thom. Jefferson) called the most important part of the Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
In reality the Constitution is a piece-of-paper with some Laws scribbled upon it, and it remains "fixed" for a long long time (two decades so far), until an amendment is added to it. Then it changes.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you, I was just going to say, many mortgages are getting modified right now. Most contracts explicitly state how you can change the terms of the contract, which is exactly what the constitution does.
Everyone Gets Their Own Truth Now (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I have to chuckle every time I see one of these stories. When I was back in school, it was pretty standard classical stuff - the Greeks, Shakespeare, Newton, the Scientific Method, etc. Now, it happened to be that dead white guys came up with most of that stuff, but that was just how it was. But sometime after I left, the Deconstructionists, the Postmodernists, the Moral Relativists, and the Frankfurt School got their hands on the reigns. No ones 'truth' was any better than another. The scientific method was no more valid than animism. Everyone got their own truth.
Well, guess what, folks? Now the Christian Fundamentalists (and the Islamic Fundamentalists) are pressing for their own 'truth'. Remember, yin and yang - everything contains within itself the seed of its opposite. That's one piece of non-white guy wisdom that holds up pretty well.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:2, Insightful)
One is truth the other is outright lies. Guess which one does not belong in a schoolbook?
FTFY
Religion has so many logical fallacies in it, lets stop pretending to defend the indefensible, religious people are for all intents and purposes would be legally considered crazy if it was not for the fact that historically humanity has been crazy in large numbers.
Re:children at risk (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish I had mod points: +1 insightful. You are especially spot-on about these people's lack of faith. I pity the poor creationist whose weak faith can't survive the scientific realities of evolution. Someone with a real, abiding faith in God wouldn't be affected by evolution or other scientific theories - they would just adapt. Christianity survived the discovery that the universe doesn't revolve around the earth, and it can survive evolution.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:4, Insightful)
Evolution has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. More than 99 of biologist believes in it. Anything that gets that level of acceptance is considered a FACT by scientists.
They may also believe in a God, but that does NOT mean they believe in Intelligent design. If in fact they do believe in Intelligent Design, that still does NOT mean they think it is science. They are all more than smart enough to recognize Intelligent Design is a RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE.
Your problem is that you ignorantly believe several blatantly false theories:
1. Only science counts. No. You can have a belief that is not science without it being invalidated. My religion is not invalidated merely because it is not science.
2. Science does not have rules. No. Science is based on the idea of testability. If something can not be falsified, then it is not science. Period. If it can be proven false, then only then is it science. You must propose a test, then do the test and then ABIDE by the test.
Intelligent design is inherently unfalsifiable. People that believe in it will never disbelieve it no matter what you say or do. The very power of God means he can do things that we can't do. He can ineffect CHEAT at any test he wants to. (I.E. He can plant dinosaur bones and make them look like they are million years old. He can create a whole set of fake dead bones that illustrate man's evolution from ape to man. Etc. etc.) That means it is NOT science. It can't ever be science.
Yes, people can believe in Intelligent Design, but that is never science, that is RELIGION.
The problem is a bunch of lieing shmucks that want to teach their personal religion and pretend it is science. That is against the highest laws of the United States of America.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:3, Insightful)
No one has ever argued that the Constitution can't be amended.
The problem is that the Constitution is simply ignored.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, "living document" was definitely a rhetorical fraud or at least a rhetorical mistake made at some point. The constitution is valueless if it can be simply interpreted into the mores and norms of whatever the current age happens to be rather than debated and amended into the modern age as the framers intended.
Which means that there's no way to understand what the constitution says in the first place.
"right to bear arms". What is an "arm"? Could the founders have intended it to cover a weapon they hadn't conceived of existing.
"right to feel secure in person and property". Does that include data on your hard-drive? What if we invent a scanner that can perform an invasive search without entering your house? Are you secure or not? The constitution doesn't mention scanners (or wire taps, or computer sniffing, or infra-red cameras, or WiFi hacking equipment, or laser mics).
It's "living" when it's applied to a new situation that did not in the past exist. The same as all laws (or do we need to make new copyright laws every time someone comes up with a new storage device?)
Does curriculum matter anymore in the Google Age? (Score:5, Insightful)
I figure that there should be mandatory classes, at the mid to upper high school level,
in basic epistemology and metaphysics (i.e. meta-level topics such as):
-How to think carefully, logically.
-How to search.
-How to formulate good questions.
-How to recognize bias; people who are "speaking for effect"; trying to
influence you, and some of the common motivations why people do
that.
How to form beliefs using epistemic responsibility.
Then set them free to explore the information from a billion sources
that we have available to us at a mouse click today.
The scariest kind of graduate is one who has been taught only to
parrot, and to conform to orthodoxy, and who does not know how to question.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean like an amendment?
Re:How bad could it be? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet, those folks were smart enough not to make him their governor.
Re:Refreshing! (Score:5, Insightful)
But where are you learning about the wrongs of these narrow-minded zealots? Other narrow-minded zealots on the opposite extreme? I can agree that there are a lot of crazy christian narrow-minded zealots, but I think there are just as many anti-religion narrow-minded zealots. Why can't we just have education books just present multiple popular theories along with the pros and cons of each?
1) Not all popular beliefs are equal. A popular belief that the holocaust never happened, or a popular belief that the president is elected by popular vote, or a popular belief that having sex "just once" can't get someone pregnant should not be taught because it's simply wrong.
2) How you teach those "popular beliefs" is itself extremenly biased. "Of People and Pandas" supposedly teached about evolution, and abstinance-only programs supposedly teach about birth control.
Re:Nothing new here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because rejecting everything wholesale is so much better than accepting it wholesale.
Having a reasonable mind that can think through issues and make decisions for oneself - that is what we should strive for. Precious few high schools teach this, however.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think that even one of those phrases are 100% unambiguous, you are the one who needs to take remedial English classes.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what religion is all about.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume you're referring to the 2nd amendment, which reads:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Open to interpretation has been "Arms" (does the Constitution guarantee a fundamental right for all US citizens to wield personal nuclear weapons? Where is the limit?), "well regulated Militia" (are the rights specified in relation to a militia or an individual?), "bear Arms" (this phrase historically means to be part of an army; does this amendment protect your right to join a militia, or apply to individuals acting alone?), and even "infringed" (does requiring assault weapon owners to register count as "infringement"?)
Many feel that the original intent of this amendment was to maintain a national defense by way of individual gun ownership, and that the right to bear arms implies the right to take your personal gun and join the militia when the nation is threatened. Having a personal right to go buy a fully automatic assault rifle and fire it off in your backyard isn't part of this amendment. There have been several instances of "judicial activism" which has expanded the meaning of this amendment over the centuries.
Open it up! (Score:3, Insightful)
This (and other reasons) is why I believe public school textbooks should be free/open source (as in speech, as well as as in beer, aside from a nominal small printing/distribution charge - which will not be needed once all schoolchildren own iPads or other e-readers) and wiki-editable with review before publishing. Get the textbook companies out of the business of making massive profits off the backs of our school system, and involve the public in the education process. Find a way to review that will weaken agenda-driven edits.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
The one that has never been proven.
This is the biggest fallacy that ID/Creationists propogate about science. It does not matter if evolution/the big bang haven't been "proven". The question is which of these is a scientific model that can be used to make statements about how the world works and make predictions to some degree of accuracy.
The Ptolemaic model of the universe was shown to be wrong, but it was science, because it claimed to predict the world worked a certain (measurable) way and it was shown to be inaccurate. But for thousands of years it was accurate enough to be useful. Newton developed a model that was more accurate and Einstein a model that was yet more accurate.
Someone will come along some day and develop a model of the universe that is even more accurate than Einstein's, but that will not mean that Einstein's model wasn't science or that the new model is "truth".
On the other hand, you cannot use the Bible to make accurate predictions about when to plant your crops, how the planets move around the sun, or what makes characteristics propogate from parents to children. This is why intelligent design is not an alternative form of science. It's not even a matter of whether intelligent design is true and evolution is wrong. Intelligent design cannot be used to do useful science. Evolution, even if ultimately wrong, can be used to make the most accurate models of the way things work.
If you don't want to treat intelligent design as religion, that's fine. Teach it in philosophy. But it is not science.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
def. Religion - a large popular cult
Re:How bad could it be? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but he's still the crappiest president of my lifetime.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:2, Insightful)
The way I see it, there are two ways to interpret a law or constitution--according to the letter and the spirit of the law. In some cases, merely the letter is sufficient to fully grasp the meaning--see the third amendment, for example--and with others, you need to consider intent as well. Nobody is arguing that this process doesn't happen, or shouldn't be applied to new circumstances.
The problem comes when these laws are "interpreted" to mean something inconsistent--or indeed, entirely in opposition to--the letter and spirit. If you can write out or change the meaning of a law simply by saying "I don't like it, so I'm going to say it means something entirely different", there's a problem. If you want to completely change or eliminate part of the constitution, you make an amendment or hold a constitutional convention... you don't just say "I'm just gonna ignore that".
Re:A Christian's take (Score:1, Insightful)
And why is that precisely? And if the Universe requires a prime mover, then why doesn't the prime mover? And if you're going to assert that the prime mover is exempt from the very logic you claim makes the prime move necessary, then why can't I apply Occam's Razor and declare the universe can have that property you claim for the prime mover, and thus declare the prime mover unnecessary?
Or, more to the point, why would this posited singularity be bound by causality?
I think you are missing the basis of science. If we are to be scientific about a concept, we first have to formulate the hypothesis and then work to prove it. Most of the recent nonsense flying around the academic and scientific realms is due to the great intrusion of politics in the more recent history. Science is about having an open mind and attempting to prove through logical process a truth, not ignoring everything else in a quest to prove a righteous point. In your post, you didn't seek to prove an inverse point, but simply bury something you have personal opposition to in counter questions. If you reach a point that you can not definitively prove one way or another on a subject or point, it becomes a matter of opinion or faith. A good example would be in the area of quantum electrodynamics, where for years there was a division between those who believed and had faith in the concept and those who opposed it simply because it had not definitively been proven.
If mankind only operated on what is 100% certain to decide what to think and consider, we would not have accomplished much of our scientific advancements of the last century.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How bad could it be? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody said that all those who graduate from those schools are poorly educated.
But, if your family is rich enough, yeah, it's quite possible to go all the way through those schools without getting any education at all.
I mean, any that doesn't involve drugs and parties.
If your daddy is paying your full tuition, and giving an extra couple of hundred thousand to the school in endowments, they're not going to flunk you out. When I was in college, we all knew who these people were. Some people were pissed about it, but I never minded that much, as that's where my university got the money to give me such a good financial aid package.
Re:surprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So Ignorant It Hurts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:you will lose this argument every time. (Score:5, Insightful)
you refer to people as "dumbass Texans".. if you're so smart, why not reason with them
Because he's smart enough to know that no amount of intelligent, thoughtfull discussion can sway these people from their emotional beliefs. We're talking about people who go "if evolution was true, why would there still be monkeys?" as if they'd pulled some irrefutable argument instead of profoundly ignorant tripe. You can't reason with them: they're immune to it.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
Naw, some dude with a beard and a toga just stamped out humanity with an injection mold. Yutzes.
Re:you will lose this argument every time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama does this every day from the highest bullypullpit in the land. You know why you can't do it? Because they're not "for" anything, they're only against Democrats. Every time he concedes a point. Every time he gives Republicans what they want. Suddenly it's not what they want anymore. You wanht lower taxes? You want balanced budgets? Well, sure, but not if a Democrat's doing it. If a Democrat's doing it, it's going to destroy the very fabric of our nation.
The reason that you can't reason with the textbook manufacturers is that they honestly believe that if they somehow "fix" the textbooks there won't be any more Democrats in the United States and it will be one homogenous white Christian nation. The failure of reality to match up with that expectation means they have not gone far enough and must keep going. It's not a matter of reality. It's a matter of frustration at not being able to fix the world using the ideals they have faith in.
Most Christians in Texas who are aware of the situation think these people are ridiculously extreme, but it's nearly impossible to get rid of them.
Re:So Ignorant It Hurts (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do ignorant people that one statement by Jefferson and try to make it stand on it's own completely out of context to prove all our founders hated religion.
On the contrary, that statement proves how much Jefferson loved religion. He loved it so much he wanted to protect every kind of religion and every diversity of religion out there by not allowing the government to indoctrinate people into one mandated religion. I'm not changing anything, the Bill of Rights was frame to protect all religions, not hate them by promoting only one of them.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I wish other legal documents could be amended, too!
I own an automobile, and I think that the law, passed 1904, should be changed so that I don't have to drive under 5mph with someone walking ahead of me waving a red flag...
But, I guess, that's just my "point of view", and I should accept all others as equally valid...
Re:children at risk (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. Again, my sig (quoted below in case I change it) seems relevant as well...
"People who need govt to enforce their religion must not have much faith in the power of its message."
Christians take this! (Score:1, Insightful)
1) Can anyone prove God didn't?
2) Can anyone prove the Bible contains more-accurate statements?
Re:How bad could it be? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, the person starting this thread called Bush "a poorly-educated man from Texas". Yet, he was neither "poorly educated" nor "from Texas"...
So, my response to him was legitimate and on-topic, and yours to me — is not.
Re:So Ignorant It Hurts (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:you will lose this argument every time. (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be giving them the credibility they want. They are not our equals. The only reason they do this is to annoy us, to try to force the educated and influential to pay them the attention they crave.
They are only "winning" in the sense in that they are playing their roles as pawns in a larger game effectively.
Re:People weren't aware of this? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's rather that religious people get very excited over a bunch of issues so out of this world that nobody else sees where the problem could possibly be, which makes it seem like there's ONLY rabid idiots, while in fact they are a very small minority. Rabid idiots win over laid-back gentlemen everytime, see nazism and russian revolution.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
There are only two options you can extrapolate from what you can see, or you can live in a total dream land where everything that happens is based on a fantasy. "By suspending judgment, by confining oneself to phenomena or objects as they appear, and by asserting nothing definite as to how they really are, one can escape the perplexities of life and attain an imperturbable peace of mind." Pyrrho (ca. 360 BC - ca. 270 BC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrho [wikipedia.org]
PS: Plenty of people chose to live their life based on a fantasy of one sort or another, but it's a dangerous path with no clear boundaries between there and true insanity.
Opt out (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
So let's remove gravity, most of physics, and genetics from the science classroom as well. Those are all theories. You don't prove a theory. You find evidence either for or against it. As soon as you find some evidence against Evolution, we can reconsider it.
To take this further, I'm fairly certain that gravity is a much more vague theory than evolution. Evolution is a pretty good theory; there is a pretty good consensus as to how it happens, why it happens and what makes it happen; it has also been directly observed. The current theory is an adaptation and improvement on a theory developed a couple of hundred years ago.
On the other hand, while we have some fairly good approximations for how gravity works (Newtonian, General Relativity), there are still a lot of different theories as to why gravity works (gravitons, M-Theory, quantum field theory, quantum loop gravity are the main ones, I think). The LHC is working on getting more evidence for some of these theories; but despite the fact that there is a huge amount of evidence for the basic stuff (i.e. massive things attract each other), the fine details of what, how and why are still very confused.
As scientific theories go, evolution seems a lot more straightforward than gravity...
[Disclaimer: I've only got an undergrad. degree in maths.]
Re:A Christian's take (Score:1, Insightful)
why do religious folks always try to use science they don't understand to disprove science they don't understand?
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A Christian's take (Score:2, Insightful)
Creationism does not in anyway detract from evolution. Some people on both sides think creationism and evolution can not exist together, but they can with the long day theory.
This is the same old christian misrepresentation of the point against creationism that only christians believe carries any weight. Evolution quite simply denies a creator or intelligent designer not by disproving it (which, of course, would be infeasible), but by providing a verifiable mechanism for the speciation process. The result is that a creator's actions are deemed irrelevant within Biology, as it has been made irrelevant in the physical sciences. And reason naturally compels reasonable people to discard a "theory" that has no explanatory power or measurable outcome in reality. Long day "theory" is nothing but a pathetic attempt to twist the clear words of the genesis in order to adjust them to reality. The only real requirement for such adjustment to be possible is the gullibility of the reader, which, in the case of christians, would be enough to convince them that the true answers to the origins of the universe are in the pages of Alice in Wonderland.
Re:Afraid of Creationism? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, it is, and therefore it has no business being taught in science class either
People claiming there is evidence are just blowing smoke. Find some that isn't from a book filled with lies! Every single textbook has "evidences" for evolution which have been proven wrong 100 years ago, yet they still include them. It has been asked of the publishers "Why don't you take the lies out?" and they have responded "What would we replace it with?". I call that an admission that they have nothing to replace it with. They know there's no true evolution evidence to include, otherwise they would have included it.
DO YOUR RESEARCH, PEOPLE!
Don't believe anything that you hear from either side! Use science, not religion. Evolution has never been science. Karl Popper said, "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program", and he's quite right. I would challenge people to present evidence here, of either side, just to be fair, but you'd get all kinds of evolution "evidence" that has been proven wrong, like a whale's not-so-vestigial hip bone, or that phony horse-evolution sequence, or any of those "primitive man" fossils that would be funny if they weren't used to lie to millions of kids across the nation, and I don't feel like getting into debates with people who don't really want to debate, but just want to argue.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:3, Insightful)
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
What does it mean to "regulate commerce"? It seems to be read as "exercise arbitrary control over anything with even the most tenuous hypothetical effect on any sort of economic activity".
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Have you been living under a rock the past couple hundred years? This is clearly ambiguous, as nobody agrees on what it means.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would anyone on either side have the least fear of having the other side presented [in Science class]?
I fear that it will produce people (eg, you) that confuse science and philosophy. They are very different subjects and shouldn't be conflated.
The fact that I believe that the currently presiding Theory of Evolution more accurately explains the observational fact that evolution exists has no bearing on that.
Even if Intelligent Design (Creationism) is 100% accurate, it should be taught in a philosophy course (I took a philosophy of religion course in college and rather enjoyed it). When you start presenting unscientific ideas as science, you begin on a path that results in nothing but people unable to produce (or even discern) logical ideas.
I think that is a very rational reason for "fear" of this type of thing.
Re:Pros and Cons? (Score:2, Insightful)
This mischaracterizes science. Science isn't just a guess with some logic behind it. It is a process. As described by the famous philosopher of science, Karl Popper, the "line of demarcation" that defines what is science versus what is not is falsification.
Science is the process of putting forth hypothoses (guesses with logic behind it), along with test suites (either by the originator of the hypothesis or by subsequent experimentalists) that depending upon the outcome of the test could falsify the hypothesis. No hypothesis is ever "proved true", nor is any attempt made for such. It's a process that spans generations, attempting to falsify existing theories with new experiments and data so that more refined hypotheses that service a wider array of phenomenon can be built. Every scientist knows that his formulas will eventually be "proven false" under some currenly untested set of curumstances, leading to further growth in the field and new discoveries. This process of falsification is embraced as the defining characteristc of science.
Religion and faith are the opposite of science. They are belief in something that can't ever be proven false. Science is the understanding that your beliefs are incomplete, and that the models we use to understand the world will steadily improve so long as people don't give up on science, but that they are the best we have for now because we have vigorouly subjected them to generations of scientists who have attempted to prove them wrong (with actually tests that could have proven them false) and they have not yet been falsified.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:4, Insightful)
If these college professors are so willing to make an argument with such an obvious flaw, they're not terribly smart after all. Don't put your faith in people smarter than you when your own brain can easily tell you that their arguments are fallacious.
Re:So Ignorant It Hurts (Score:3, Insightful)
no, you label them as hypotheses.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
Even the most moronic creationist admits that evolution has been proven to work at the microscopic level.
Bit of an overestimation of the "highly moronic creationist" crowd unfortunately. Some of the more moronic creationists likely don't believe microbes exist. The -most- moronic creationist probably doesn't believe microSCOPES exist.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering that the bill of rights themselves were passed to specify partly what the government was protecting and to put further limitations on what the government can demand, it's curious that the anti-gun lobby insists that the second is a black sheep that was mean to restrict something in the general population.
Not to mention, the militia was, as I understand, at the time, often any male of age able to shoot a rifle. The militia (well regulated, meaning well-armed and provided for) was a statement of purpose on why "the people" must be allowed to keep and bear arms, as it was envisioned that the militias (remember, statehood was much bigger back then than it is now) would defend the local states from a potentially tyrannical federal government.
Re:children at risk (Score:5, Insightful)
I myself had most of my primary and secondary education at Roman Catholic school, and one of the things they taught us in religious classes is that the conflict between science and religion is completely bogus. Science is there to answer the how of the universe, whereas religion is there to answer the why. It is unimportant that the ancient Sumerian cosmology reflected in the Old Testament creation stories is at odds with the findings of modern-day science, that's not the point. The point behind the creation story is not to explain how man and the universe came to be, but rather why they came to be, and their purpose. It seems that this was how the Catholic Church came to resolve its once-turbulent relationship to science since the days of Galileo. As Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI has said:
Further, he says in a book published in 2008:
The Catholic Church seems to have come a long way since the 17th Century. Unfortunately, it looks like fundamentalist Christians in the United States are all set to repeat many of the mistakes made by the Catholic Church back then, but with far greater matters at stake than the life and reputation of an old scientist.
Re:A Christian's take (Score:2, Insightful)
It starts with the conclusion "God did it" and then it tries to shoehorn facts to fit the already drawn conclusion. It's an insane mess of religious ramblings and has nothing to do with science, not one iota!
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:1, Insightful)
"Could the founders have intended it to cover a weapon they hadn't conceived of existing."
Um, yeah. They weren't monkeys. Are you really suggesting that they hadn't conceived of, or conceived of but had no intention of including, advances in rifle technology? If that's how you read contracts then you probably have a problem with contracts written yesterday, too. Now, did they mean to include cannons? That I don't know. A good test is probably this: what weapons would commonly be carried or stored at home for personal defense if there were no laws against them? That is going to let in automatic rifles, but not claymores, fighter planes and nuclear weapons. And not cannons back in the founders day, either.
It's actually the right to be secure in your person and property. The right to feel secure does not exist, though it is what our government tried to replace actually security with.
"It's "living" when it's applied to a new situation that did not in the past exist."
I wish that were the only time it "lived". That I could handle. Unfortunately the word "interstate" has led an interesting "life". As has the exclusion of powers clause. You know, the fundamental restrictions on the power of the Federal government?
Re:Christians take this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Christians take this! (Score:3, Insightful)
This crap only fools Christians. It's all made up, fercripesakes! Don't y'all have an 8th commandment or something that stops you from lying?
Re:How bad could it be? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A Christian's take (Score:5, Insightful)
Or beyond that, why do we even have organs? I always felt that an intelligent designer would have just created us as walking, talking bags of magical life made from life cubes or something. Whenever I ask creationists why I have an appendix or a gall bladder or why, out of all the temperatures in the universe, I can only live within a tiny range of them, or out of the entire EM spectrum, I can only see a tiny sliver of it, or why leukemia exists, the only answer I get is 'God made it that way'. Seriously? All powerful? All knowing? That's why people have to poop? God wanted them to?
Re:Then don't get a Christian jury! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Christians can enforce their beliefs only upon those who voluntarily accept such enforcement."
Until they write laws and become those who administer those laws:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Dominionism [sourcewatch.org]
http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Theonomy/ [monergism.com]
Re:A Christian's take (Score:4, Insightful)
something goes wrong
Omnipotent designer says what?
The keys to easy fascism (Score:3, Insightful)
The pieces are already in place. We're about 9/10ths the way there.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:4, Insightful)
The context of the quote can be interpret that they ARE talking about people in the militia. Why mention the militia at ALL if everyone can have a gun, It's redundant.NO, I am not advocating an interpretation , simple pointing out how a real logical debate can start up.Just using logic, that statement can be taken apart pretty well.I would argue NO interpretation should be made by anyone who hasn't studied the forming of the constitution and the culture of the time.
Oh, I don't know, maybe because... (Score:3, Insightful)
If Americans don't care I don't see why any one else should either.
...they [we] have the world's largest supply of nuclear weapons. Do you really want a bunch of religious zealots in control of those? Religious zealots who pray for THE RAPTURE!
Re:A Christian's take (Score:3, Insightful)
Or the program in question is evolution.
Science attempts to explain what the rules of the universe are. Philosophy and religion attempt to explain why the rules of the universe are. The two are largely orthogonal except in the rare cases where religion or philosophy overstep their bounds and try to explain that which is falsifiable, and even then, only when taken too literally.
Re:Obligatory Richard Feynman on Textbooks (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod up to the max, please!
I'm so happy that somebody's still reading Feynman.
Can we make him compulsory for /.? If you haven't read him, do so, you'll enjoy it. I guarantee it.
Re:People weren't aware of this? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never met anyone who seemed to suggest that the Constitution being a "living document" meant that the words have no meaning. I think you are setting up a straw man argument. Aware that its not possible to codify laws in one context that would work in all possible contexts, the Constitution is fluid rather than fixed. The Constitution was designed to evolve.
Re:"Living Constitution" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Christians take this! (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you be similarly eager to teach astrology alongside cosmology? How about teaching the appropriate use of leeches and trepanation alongside real medicine?
In what world is it at all appropriate to present your personal speculation as scientific fact to a group of impressionable schoolchildren?
Creationism is not a scientific theory, and Evolution has more evidentiary support than the theory of gravity. If you want to "teach the controversy", do it at home, or even in a religious studies class, but get it the fuck out of our science classes.
Re:Nothing new here. (Score:5, Insightful)
This documentation you speak of was written 90 years after this supposed person died. There are TWO references to this person you call Jesus in literature of the time that are believed to have not been altered by early Christians. (it was a fad in 300-600AD to rewrite history to insert religious dogma, it was actually supported and encouraged by the early Christian church mostly due to Constantine's "control everything" influence) In fact this documentation you speak of wouldn't be admissible in any modern court because it's heresay that's gone through at least 3 generations before it was written down. That is if it wasn't all concocted later by someone by the name of Paul (who used to be called Saul) seeking to exert his domination of this new religion. And it certainly would be suspect if Constantine had adopted a favored sect of Christianity and used his power as Emperor to destroy all the other sects of Christianity and burn all the conflicting teachings. And questions wouldn't be raised if someone found all those older teachings stored in some cave by the dead sea (maybe call them the dead sea scrolls) to hide them from the Romans searching out all conflicting dogma to destroy it.
The council of Trent compiled the Bible in 300A.D. in the village of Trent Italy. This council was tasked with taking over 1300 religious letters and teachings and compiling them into a single text. Controlled by the Sect of early Christians that Constantine adopted they selected the works and teachings familiar and supported by them and destroyed all the rest. The dead sea scrolls discovered several decades ago point to the vast collection of works which were scoured to gain the works of the bible. Later in the middle ages King James commissioned a translation of the Bible. Taking the Catholic work they removed 13 books, mostly by uncredited authors (which is silly as Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are pen names where the author was unknown and at least two of the books have multiple authors) and issued this as the King James Bible. As a modern translation of the Bible (at the time) the King James version was highly successful and adopted by most English speaking Christian sects as the "Bible", ignoring the existence of the original Catholic bible.
So your wonderful documentation is heresay that's been edited at LEAST 2 times by various parties not including the changes in translation. This doesn't even include the changes the Catholic church made in the book from 300A.D to the King James translation or any of the subsequent revisions. Your documentation isn't documentation, it's fiction with a historical setting. Jesus wasn't the son of god, he was a Jewish separatist that spoke out about the separation of the Jewish state from the Roman Empire (something Rome took very seriously and that got entire ethnic groups nailed to crosses). Saul/Paul created the entire virgin birth/resurrection myth single handily more than 70 years after Jesus was nailed to a cross for speaking out about leaving the roman empire. He never knew Jesus, never met him, never even met anyone that had met Jesus but his tale of virgin birth and life story is the basis of the new testament. Had he lived in a modern era he would have been committed to a mental institution along with many of the early Christians. In fact John the Revelator would have been that scary homeless dude preaching about the end of the world that exists in every major city. These are the people you idiolize if you are Christian, they are your prophets and they are no different than Joseph Smith other than that some of them were clearly eating the wrong kind of mushrooms.